Oh Dear

I edit, in a limited way, Topic's Publishing News page, which means basically trying to keep up with and eliminate the many, many irrelevant posts put up by the friendly "roboblogger," and also occasionally linking to publishing news stories I have found elsewhere, especially since the site tends to be newspaper-heavy and I am more of a book publishing type. In any case, I went on just now to take down some posts about J. Lo and Obama, etc., and when they were gone I noticed a very depressing trend. Almost every post was a "XXX laid off at ABC Newspaper" story. And most of them had been put there by the roboblogger, who I don't believe assembled them with any conscious or unconscious intent to depress. It's just fact. Horrible, depressing fact. I've separated this newspaper meltdown in my mind from anything that might happen to book publishing, reasoning that the main causes behind it--the rise of online media, of news services that make local reporters obsolete, etc.--weren't at all relevant to books and couldn't hurt them. My thinking since this whole economic armeggedon started has been, "Book publishing has already been winnowed by hardship. It has come to depend on a loyal reading populace who won't abandon it like others will Hummers and brand-name foods. It is not a boom industry. It can't be that affected by all this." Because, really, how much can you take? How much harder can it get? But of course it is affected. After all, one of those laid off stories was one I posted on Rodale, which publishes books as well as magazines. And then I read this post from Editorial Ass about book publishing's own disasters. So what now? As she mentions, book publishers have always had slim profit margins, and some have already folded. Apparently publishers depend on readers who are very much influenced by the tough times. Although it obviously hurts--a lot--in a way I don't think this will change much. People will still read, they just won't buy full price books--and maybe publishing will benefit from the boom, or at least the relative stability, that entertainment industries seem to experience during depressions. I don't think it's out of the the question. When we come out of this, I don't think people will have fundamentally changed attitudes towards books, as they might towards newspapers or luxury magazines. And maybe this big shake up will help change some publishing practices for the better. Ass mentions how crazed advances are shrinking, and how attention is being drawn to the kooky nature of book return policies. I just hope things don't get too bad before then. Scary stuff.